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THE  ART  OF  THE  PEOPLE 
WILLIAM  MORRIS 


Wc^c  Urt  of  tbe 
people 

An  Address  delivered  before  the  Birmingham 
Society  of  Arts,  February  19th,  1879 

By  WILLIAM  MORRIS 


Ralph  Fletcher  Seymour,  Publisher 
Fine  Arts  Building,  Chicago 
MDCCCCII 


CASE 

B 


Copyright  190a 
Ralph  Fletcher  Seymour 


THE  ART  OF  THE  PEOPLE 


( 


And  the  men  of  labour  spent  their  strength  in 
daily  struggling  for  bread  to  maintain  the  vital 
strength  they  labour  with:  so  living  in  a  daily  cir- 
culation of  sorrow,  living  but  to  work,  and  working 
but  to  live,  as  if  daily  bread  were  the  only  end  of 
a  wearisome  life,  and  a  wearisome  life  the  only  oc- 
casion of  daily  bread.— Daniel  Defoe* 


tecHrtofme 
people 

An  Address  by  WILLIAM  MORRIS 
Author  of  The  Earthly  Paradise/  Etc. 

KNOW  THAT 
A  LARGE  PRO 
PORTION  OF 
THOSE  HERE 
PRESENT 
ARE  EITHER 
ALREADY 
PRACTISING 
THE  FINE 
Arts,  or  are  being  specially  educated  to 
that  end,  and  I  feel  that  I  may  be  ex- 
pected to  address  myself  specially  to 
these.  But  since  it  is  not  to  be  doubted 
that  we  are  all  met  together  because 
of  the  interest  we  take  in  what  concerns 
these  arts,  I  would  rather  address  myself 
to  you  all  as  representing  the  public  in 
general.  Indeed,  those  of  you  who  are 
specially  studying  Art  could  learn  little 
would  be  useful  to  yourselves 
learning  under 


The  Art  o£  competent  masters— most  competent  I  am  glad  to 
the  People  know— by  means  of  a  system  which  should  teach 
you  all  you  need,  if  you  have  been  right  in  making 
the  first  step  of  devoting  yourselves  to  Art;  I  mean 
if  you  are  aiming  at  the  right  thing,  and  in  some 
way  or  another  understand  what  Art  means,  which 
you  may  well  do  without  being  able  to  express  it, 
and  if  you  are  resolute  to  follow  on  the  path  which 
that  inborn  knowledge  has  shown  to  you;  if  it  is 
otherwise  with  you  than  this,  no  system  and  no 
teachers  will  help  you  to  produce  real  art  of  any 
kind,  be  it  never  so  humble*  Those  of  you  who 
are  real  artists  know  well  enough  all  the  special 
advice  I  can  give  you,  and  in  how  few  words  it  may 
be  said— follow  nature,  study  antiquity,  make  your 
own  art,  and  do  not  steal  it,  grudge  no  expense 
of  trouble,  patience,  or  courage,  in  the  striving  to 
accomplish  the  hard  thing  you  have  set  yourselves 
to  do*  You  have  had  all  that  said  to  you  twenty 
times,  I  doubt  not;  and  twenty  times  twenty  have 
said  it  to  yourselves,  and  now  I  have  said  it  again 
to  you,  and  done  neither  you  nor  me  good  nor  harm 
thereby.  So  true  it  all  is,  so  well  known,  and  so 
hard  to  follow* 

5UT  to  me,  and  I  hope  to  you.  Art  is  a  very 

serious  thing,  and  cannot  by  any  means 

be  dissociated  from  the  weighty  matters 

that  occupy  the  thoughts  of  men;  and 

there  are  principles  underlying  the  practice  of  it, 

8 


on  which  all  serious-minded  men,  may— nay,  must  The  Art  o£ 
—have  their  own  thoughts.  It  is  on  some  of  these  the  People 
that  I  ask  your  leave  to  speak,  and  to  address  myself, 
not  only  to  those  who  are  consciously  interested  in 
the  arts,  but  to  all  those  also  who  have  considered 
what  the  progress  of  civilisation  promises  and 
threatens  to  those  who  shall  come  after  us:  what 
there  is  to  hope  and  fear  for  the  future  of  the  arts, 
which  were  born  with  the  birth  of  civilisation  and 
will  only  die  with  its  death— what  on  this  side  of 
things,  thepresent  timeof  strife  and  doubt  and  change 
is  preparing  for  the  better  time,  when  the  change 
shall  have  come,  the  strife  be  lulled,  and  the  doubt 
cleared:  this  is  a  question,  I  say,  which  is  indeed 
weighty,  and  may  well  interest  all  thinking  men. 
jAY,  so  universally  important  is  it, 
that  I  fear  lest  you  should  think  I 
am  taking  too  much  upon  myself  to 
speak  to  you  on  so  weighty  a  matter, 
nor  should  I  have  dared  to  do  so,  if 
I  did  not  feel  that  I  am  to-night  only 
the  mouthpiece  of  better  men  than  myself,  whose 
hopes  and  fears  I  share;  and  that  being  so,  I  am  the 
more  emboldened  to  speak  out,  if  I  can,  my  full 
mind  on  the  subject,  because  I  am  in  a  city  where, 
if  anywhere,  men  are  not  contented  to  live  wholly 
for  themselves  and  the  present,  but  have  fully  ac- 
cepted the  duty  of  keeping  their  eyes  open  to  what- 
ever new  is  stirring,  so  that  they  may  help  and  be 
b  9 


The  Art  of  helped  by  any  truth  that  there  may  be  in  it.  Nor 
the  People  can  I  forget  that  since  you  have  done  me  the  great 
honour  of  choosing  me  for  the  President  of  your 
Society  of  Arts  for  the  past  year,  and  of  asking  me 
to  speak  to  you  to-night  I  should  be  doing  less  than 
my  duty  if  I  did  not  according  to  my  lights,  speak 
out  straightforwardly  whatever  seemed  to  me  might 
be  in  a  small  degree  useful  to  you.  Indeed,  I  think 
I  am  among  friends,  who  may  forgive  me  if  I  speak 
rashly,  but  scarcely  if  I  speak  falsely. 

|HE  aim  of  your  Society  and  School  of  Arts 
is,  as  I  understand  it,  to  further  those  arts 
by  education  widely  spread.    A  very  great 
object  is  that,  and  well  worthy  of  the  rep- 
utation of  this  great  city;  but  since  Birmingham 
has  also,  I  rejoice  to  know,  a  great  reputation  for  not 
allowing  things  to  go  about  shamming  life  when 
the  brains  are  knocked  out  of  them,  I  think  you 
should  know  and  see  clearly  what  it  is  you  have 
undertaken  to  further  by  these  institutions,  and 
whether  you  really  care  about  it,  or  only  languidly 
acquiesce  in  it— whether,  in  short,  you  know  it  to  the 
heart,  and  are  indeed  part  and  parcel  of  it,  with  your 
own  will,  or  against  it;  or  else  have  heard  say  that 
it  is  a  good  thing  if  any  one  care  to  meddle  with  it. 
F  you  are  surprised  at  my  putting  that 
question  for  your  consideration,  I  will  tell 
^^  you  why  I  do  so.     There  are  some  of  us 
who  love  Art  most,  and  I  may  say  most 

lO 


faithfully,  who  see  for  certain  that  such  love  is  The  Art  of 
rare  nowadays.  We  cannot  help  seeing,  that  be-  the  People 
sides  a  vast  number  of  people,  who  (poor  souls!)  are 
sordid  and  brutal  of  mind  and  habits,  and  have  had 
no  chance  or  choice  in  the  matter,  there  are  many 
high-minded,  thoughtful,  and  cultivated  men  who 
inwardly  think  the  arts  to  be  a  foolish  accident  of 
civilisation— nay,  worse  perhaps,  a  nuisance,  a  dis- 
ease, a  hindrance  to  human  progress.  Some  of  these, 
doubtless,  are  very  busy  about  other  sides  of  thought. 
They  are,  as  I  should  put  it,  so  artistically  engrossed 
by  the  study  of  science,  politics,  or  what  not,  that 
they  have  necessarily  narrowed  their  minds  by  their 
hard  and  praiseworthy  labours.  But  since  such  men 
are  few,  this  does  not  account  for  a  prevalent  habit 
of  thought  that  looks  upon  Art  as  at  best  trifling. 
HAT  is  wrong,  then,  with  us  or  the  arts, 
|§  since  what  was  once  accounted  so  glori- 
ous, is  now  deemed  paltry? 

The  question  is  no  light  one;  for,  to  put 
the  matter  in  its  clearest  light,  I  will  say  that  the 
leaders  of  modern  thought  do  for  the  most  part 
sincerely  and  single-mindedly  hate  and  despise  the 
arts;  and  you  know  well  that  as  the  leaders  are,  so 
must  the  people  be;  and  that  means  that  we  who 
are  met  together  here  for  the  furthering  of  Art  by 
wide-spread  education  are  either  deceiving  our- 
selves and  wasting  our  time,  since  we  shall  one  day 
be  of  the  same  opinion  as  the  best  men  among  us, 

11 


The  Art  of  or  else  we  represent  a  small  minority  that  is  right 
the  People  3S  minorities  sometimes  are,  while  those  upright 
men  aforesaid,  and  the  great  mass  of  civilised  men> 
have  been  blinded  by  untoward  circumstances, 

HAT  we  are  of  this  mind— the 
minority  that  is  right— is,  I  hope, 
the  case.  I  hope  we  know  assuredly 
that  the  arts  we  have  met  together 
to  further  are  necessary  to  the  life 
of  man,  if  the  progress  of  civiliza- 
tion is  not  to  be  as  causeless  as  the  turning  of  a 
wheel  that  makes  nothing. 

How,  then,  shall  we,  the  minority,  carry  out  the 
duty  which  our  position  thrusts  upon  us,  of  striving 
to  grow  into  a  majority? 

]F  we  could  only  explain  to  those  thought- 
ful men,  and  the  millions  of  whom  they 
are  the  flower,  what  the  thing  is  that  we 
love,  which  is  to  us  as  the  bread  we  eat, 
and  the  air  we  breathe,  but  about  which  they  know 
nothing  and  feel  nothing,  save  a  vague  instinct  of  re- 
pulsion, then  the  seed  of  victory  might  be  sown.  This 
is  hard  indeed  to  do;  yet  if  we  ponder  upon  a  chapter 
of  ancient  or  mediaeval  history,  it  seems  to  me  some 
glimmer  of  a  chance  of  doing  so  breaks  in  upon  us. 
Take  for  example  a  century  of  the  Byzantine  Em- 
pire, weary  yourselves  with  reading  the  names  of 
the  pedants,  tyrants,  and  tax-gatherers  to  whom  the 
terrible  chain  which  long-dead  Rome  once  forged, 

12 


still  gave  the  power  of  cheating  people  into  think-  The  Art  of 
ing  that  they  were  necessary  lords  of  the  world*  the  People 
Turn  then  to  the  lands  they  governed,  and  read  and 
forget  a  long  string  of  the  causeless  murders  of 
Northern  and  Saracen  pirates  and  robbers.  That  is 
pretty  much  the  sum  of  what  so-called  history  has 
left  us  of  the  tale  of  those  days — the  stupid  lan- 
guor and  the  evil  deeds  of  kings  and  scoundrels. 
Must  we  turn  away  then,  and  say  that  all  was  evil? 
How  then  did  men  live  from  day  to  day?  How  then 
did  Europe  grow  into  intelligence  and  freedom?  It 
seems  there  were  others  than  those  of  whom  his- 
tory (so-called)  has  left  us  the  names  and  the  deeds. 
These,  the  raw  material  for  the  treasury  and  the 
slave-market  we  now  call  'the  people/  and  we 
know  that  they  were  working  all  that  while.  Yes, 
and  that  their  work  was  not  merely  slaves'  work, 
the  meal-trough  before  them  and  the  whip  behind 
them;  for  though  history  (so-called)  has  forgotten 
them,  yet  their  work  has  not  been  forgotten,  but 
has  made  another  history— the  history  of  Art.  There 
is  not  an  ancient  city  in  the  East  or  the  West  that 
does  not  bear  some  token  of  their  grief,  and  joy,  and 
hope.  From  Ispahan  to  Northumberland,  there  is 
no  building  built  between  the  seventh  and  seven- 
teenth centuries  that  does  not  show  the  influence 
of  the  labour  of  that  oppressed  and  neglected  herd 
of  men.  No  one  of  them,  indeed,  rose  high  above 
his  fellows.   There  was  no  Plato,  or  Shakespeare, 

13 


The  Art  of  or  Michael  Angelo  amongst  them.   Yet  scattered 
the  People   as  it  was  among  manymen,howstrong  their  thought 
was,  how  long  it  abided,  how  far  it  travelled ! 

ND  so  it  was  ever  through  all  those  days 
when  Art  was  so  vigorous  and  progres- 
sive.    Who  can  say  how  little  we  should 
know  of  many  periods,  but  for  their  art? 
History  (so-called)  has  remembered  the  kings  and 
warriors,  because  they  destroyed;  Art  has  remem- 
bered the  people,  because  they  created. 

THINK>  then,  that  this  knowledge  we 
have  of  the  life  of  past  times  gives  us 


R^l  some  token  of  the  way  we  should  take 
in  meeting  those  honest  and  single- 
hearted  men  who  above  all  things  desire  the  world's 
progress,  but  whose  minds  are,  as  it  were,  sick  on 
this  point  of  the  arts.  Surely  you  may  say  to  them: 
When  all  is  gained  that  you  (and  we)  so  long  for, 
what  shall  we  do  then?  That  great  change  which 
we  are  working  for,  each  in  his  own  way,  will  come 
like  other  changes,  as  a  thief  in  the  night,  and  will 
be  with  us  before  we  know  it;  but  let  us  imagine 
that  its  consummation  has  come  suddenly  and 
dramatically,  acknowledged  and  hailed  by  all  right- 
minded  people;  and  what  shall  we  do  then,  lest  we 
begin  once  more  to  heap  up  fresh  corruption  for 
the  woeful  labour  of  ages  once  again?  I  say,  as  we 
turn  away  from  the  flagstaff  where  the  new  ban- 
ner has  been  just  run  up;  as  we  depart,  our  ears 

14 


yet  ringing  with  the  blare  of  the  heralds'  trumpets  The  Art  o£ 
that  have  proclaimed  the  new  order  of  things,  what  the  People 
shall  we  turn  to  then,  what  must  we  turn  to  then? 
To  what  else,  save  to  our  work,  our  daily  labour? 
ITH  what,  then,  shall  we  adorn  it  when 
we  have  become  wholly  free  and  reason- 


^  able?  It  is  necessary  toil,  but  shall  it  be 
toil  only  ?  Shall  all  we  can  do  with  it 
be  to  shorten  the  hours  of  that  toil  to  the  utmost, 
that  the  hours  of  leisure  may  be  long  beyond  what 
men  used  to  hope  for?  and  what  then  shall  we  do 
with  the  leisure,  if  we  say  that  all  toil  is  irksome? 
Shall  we  sleep  it  all  away?— Yes,  and  never  wake 
up  again,  I  should  hope,  in  that  case. 

What  shall  we  do  then?  what  shall  our  neces- 
sary hours  of  labour  bring  forth? 

HAT  will  be  a  question  for  all  men  in 
that  day  when  many  wrongs  are  righted, 
and  when  there  will  be  no  classes  of  deg- 
radation on  whom  the  dirty  work  of  the 
world  can  be  shovelled;  and  if  men's  minds  are 
still  sick  and  loathe  the  arts,  they  will  not  be  able 
to  answer  that  question. 

^NCE  men  sat  under  grinding  tyr- 
annies, amidst  violence  and  fear  so 
great,  that  nowadays  we  wonder 
how  they  lived  through  twenty- 
four  hours  of  it,  till  we  remember 
that  then,  as  now,  their  daily  labour 

15 


The  Art  of  was  the  main  part  of  their  lives,  and  that  that  daily 
the  People  labour  was  sweetened  by  the  daily  creation  of  Art; 
and  shall  we  who  are  delivered  from  the  evils  they 
bore,  live  drearier  days  than  they  did?  Shall  men, 
who  have  come  forth  from  so  many  tyrannies,  bind 
themselves  to  yet  another  one,  and  become  the 
slaves  of  nature,  piling  day  upon  day  of  hopeless, 
useless  toil?  Must  this  go  on  worsening  till  it 
comes  to  this  at  last— that  the  world  shall  have 
come  into  its  inheritance,  and  with  all  foes  con- 
quered and  nought  to  bind  it,  shall  choose  to  sit 
down  and  labour  for  ever  amidst  grim  ugliness? 
How,  then,  were  all  our  hopes  cheated,  what  a  gulf 
of  despair  should  we  tumble  into  then? 

^N  truth,  it  cannot  be;  yet  if  that  sickness 
of  repulsion  to  the  arts  were  to  go  on 
hopelessly,  nought  else  would  be,  and  the 
extinction  of  the  love  of  beauty  and  im- 
agination would  prove  to  be  the  extinction  of  civil- 
isation*    But  that  sickness  the  world  will  one  day 
throw  off,  yet  will,  I  believe,  pass  through  many 
pains  in  so  doing,  some  of  which  will  look  very  like 
the  death-throes  of  Art,  and  some,  perhaps,  will  be 
grievous  enough  to  the  poor  people  of  the  world; 
since  hard  necessity,  I  doubt,  works  many  of  the 
world's  changes,  rather  than  the  purblind  striving 
to  see,  which  we  call  the  foresight  of  man. 


i6 


EANWHILE.  remember  that  I  asked  The  Art  o£ 
just  now,  what  was  amiss  in  Art  or  in  the  People 
ourselves  that  this  sickness  was  upon  us. 
Nothing  is  wrong  or  can  be  with  Art  in 
the  abstract— that  must  always  be  good  for  man- 
kind, or  we  are  all  wrong  together:  but  with  Art,  as 
we  of  these  latter  days  have  known  it,  there  is  much 
wrong;  nay,  what  are  we  here  for  to-night  if  that  is 
not  so?  were  not  the  schools  of  art  founded  all 
over  the  country  some  thirty  years  ago  because  we 
had  found  out  that  popular  art  was  fading— or  per- 
haps had  faded  out  from  amongst  us? 

jS  to  the  progress  made  since  then  in  this 
country — and  in  this  country  only,  if  at 
all— it  is  hard  for  me  to  speak  without 
being  either  ungracious  or  insincere,  and 
yet  speak  I  must,  I  say,  then,  that  an  apparent 
external  progress  in  some  ways  is  obvious,  but  I 
do  not  know  how  far  that  is  hopeful,  for  time  must 
try  it,  and  prove  whether  it  be  a  passing  fashion 
or  the  first  token  of  a  real  stir  among  the  great 
mass  of  civilised  men.  To  speak  quite  frankly,  and 
as  one  friend  to  another,  I  must  needs  say  that  even 
as  I  say  those  words  they  seem  too  good  to  be  true. 
And  yet— who  knows?— so  wont  are  we  to  frame 
history  for  the  future  as  well  as  for  the  past,  so 
often  are  our  eyes  blind  both  when  we  look  back- 
ward and  when  we  look  forward,  because  we  have 
been  gazing  so  intently  at  our  own  days,  our  own 
c  17 


The  Art  of  lines.    May  all  be  better  than  I  think  it! 


the  People 


T  any  rate  let  us  count  our  gains,  and  set 
them  against  less  hopeful  signs  of  the 
times.  In  England,  then— and  as  far  as  I 
know,  in  England  only— painters  of  pic- 
tures have  grown,  I  believe,  more  numerous,  and 
certainly  more  conscientious  in  their  work,  and  in 
some  cases— and  this  more  especially  in  England- 
have  developed  and  expressed  a  sense  of  beauty 
which  the  world  has  not  seen  for  the  last  three 
hundred  years.  This  is  certainly  a  very  great  gain, 
which  is  not  easy  to  over-estimate,  both  for  those 
who  make  the  pictures  and  those  who  use  them. 
URTHERMORE,  in  England,  and  in 
England  only,  there  has  been  a  great  im- 
provement in  architecture  and  the  arts 
that  attend  it— arts  which  it  was  the  spe- 
cial province  of  the  afore-mentioned  schools  to 
revive  and  foster.  This,  also,  is  a  considerable  gain 
to  the  users  of  the  works  so  made,  but  I  fear  a 
gain  less  important  to  most  of  those  concerned  in 
makincf  them. 

****'^  GAINST  these  gains  we  must,  I  am 
very  sorry  to  say,  set  the  fact  not 
easy  to  be  accounted  for,  that  the 
rest  of  the  civilised  world  (so  called) 
seems  to  have  done  little  more  than 
stand  still  in  these  matters;  and 
that  among  ourselves  these  improvements  have 

i8 


concerned  comparatively  few  people,  the  mass  of  The  Art  of 
our  population  not  being  in  the  least  touched  by  the  People 
them;  so  that  the  great  bulk  of  our  architecture— 
the  art  which  most  depends  on  the  taste  of  the 
people  at  large— grows  worse  and  worse  every  day* 
MUST  speak  also  of  another  piece  of 
discouragement  before  I  go  further,  I 
daresay  many  of  you  will  remember  how 
emphatically  those  who  first  had  to  do 
with  the  movement  of  which  the  foundation  of 
our  art-schools  was  a  part  called  the  attention 
of  our  pattern-designers  to  the  beautiful  works 
of  the  East.  This  was  surely  most  well  judged  of 
them>  for  they  bade  us  look  at  an  art  at  once 
beautiful  orderly,  living  in  our  own  day>  and  above 
all  popular.  Now,  it  is  a  grievous  result  of  the 
sickness  of  civilisation  that  this  art  is  fast  disap- 
pearing before  the  advance  of  western  conquest 
and  commerce — fast,  and  every  day  faster.  While 
we  are  met  here  in  Birmingham  to  further  the 
spread  of  education  in  art.  Englishmen  in  India 
are,  in  their  short-sightedness,  actively  destroying 
the  very  sources  of  that  education— jewellery, 
metal-work,  pottery,  calico-printing,  brocade- 
weaving,  carpet-making— all  the  famous  and  his- 
torical arts  of  the  great  peninsula  have  been  for 
long  treated  as  matters  of  no  importance,  to  be 
thrust  aside  for  the  advantage  of  any  paltry  scrap 
of  so-called   commerce;    and   matters   are  now 

19 


The  Art  of  speedily  coming  to  an  end  there.  I  daresay  some 
the  People  of  you  saw  the  presents  which  the  native  Princes 
gave  to  the  Prince  of  Wales  on  the  occasion  of  his 
progress  through  India.  I  did  myselt  I  will  not  say 
with  great  disappointment  for  I  guessed  what  they 
would  be  like,  but  with  great  griet  since  there  was 
scarce  here  and  there  a  piece  of  goods  among  these 
costly  gifts,  things  given  as  great  treasures,  which 
faintly  upheld  the  ancient  fame  of  the  cradle  of 
the  industrial  arts.  Nay,  in  some  cases,  it  would 
have  been  laughable,  if  it  had  not  been  so  sad,  to 
see  the  piteous  simplicity  with  which  the  con- 
quered race  had  copied  the  blank  vulgarity  of  their 
lords.  And  this  deterioration  we  are  now,  as  I 
have  said,  actively  engaged  in  forwarding.  I  have 
read  a  little  book,  a  handbook  to  the  Indian  Court 
of  last  year's  Paris  Exhibition,  which  takes  the 
occasion  of  noting  the  state  of  manufactures  in 
India  one  by  one.  'Art  manufactures,*  you  would 
call  them;  but,  indeed,  all  manufactures  are,  or 
were,  'art  manufactures'  in  India.  Dr.  Birdwood, 
the  author  of  this  book,  is  of  great  experience  in 
Indian  life,  a  man  of  science,  and  a  lover  of  the  arts* 
His  story,  by  no  means  a  new  one  to  me,  or  others 
interested  in  the  East  and  its  labour,  is  a  sad  one 
indeed.  The  conquered  races  in  their  hopelessness 
are  everywhere  giving  up  the  genuine  practice  of 
their  own  arts,  which  we  know  ourselves,  as  we 
have  indeed  loudly  proclaimed,  are  founded  on  the 

20 


truest  and  most  natural  principles.  The  often-  The  Art  of 
praised  perfection  of  these  arts  is  the  blossom  of  the  People 
many  ages  of  labour  and  change,  but  the  conquered 
races  are  casting  it  aside  as  a  thing  of  no  value,  so 
that  they  may  conform  themselves  to  the  inferior 
art  or  rather  the  lack  of  art,  of  their  conquerors. 
In  some  parts  of  the  country  the  genuine  arts  are 
quite  destroyed ;  in  many  others  nearly  so ;  in  all 
they  have  more  or  less  begun  to  sicken.  So  much 
so  is  this  the  case,  that  now  for  some  time  the 
Government  has  been  furthering  this  deterioration. 
As  for  example,  no  doubt  with  the  best  intentions, 
and  certainly  in  full  sympathy  with  the  general 
English  public,  both  at  home  and  in  India,  the 
Government  is  now  manufacturing  cheap  Indian 
carpets  in  the  Indian  gaols.  I  do  not  say  that  it  is 
a  bad  thing  to  turn  out  real  work,  or  works  of  art, 
in  gaols;  on  the  contrary,  I  think  it  good  if  it  be 
properly  managed.  But  in  this  case,  the  Govern- 
ment, being,  as  I  said,  in  full  sympathy  with  the 
English  public,  has  determined  that  it  will  make 
its  wares  cheap,  whether  it  make  them  nasty  or 
not.  Cheap  and  nasty  they  are,  I  assure  you;  but, 
though  they  are  the  worst  of  their  kind,  they  would 
not  be  made  thus,  if  everything  did  not  tend  the 
same  way.  And  it  is  the  same  everywhere  and 
with  all  Indian  manufactures,  till  it  has  come  to 
this— that  these  poor  people  have  all  but  lost  the 
one  distinction,  the  one  glory  that  conquest  had 

21 


The  Art  of  left  them.  Their  famous  wares,  so  praised  by 
the  People  those  who  thirty  years  ago  began  to  attempt  the 
restoration  of  popular  art  amongst  ourselves,  are 
no  longer  to  be  bought  at  reasonable  prices  in  the 
common  market  but  must  be  sought  for  and 
treasured  as  precious  relics  for  the  museums  we 
have  founded  for  our  art  education.  In  short  their 
art  is  dead,  and  the  commerce  of  modern  civilisa- 
tion has  slain  it. 

HAT  is  going  on  in  India  is  also  going  on, 
more  or  less,  all  over  the  East;  but  I  have 
^  spoken  of  India  chiefly  because  I  cannot 
help  thinking  that  we  ourselves  are  re- 
sponsible for  what  is  happening  there.    Chance- 
hap  has  made  us  the  lords  of  many  millions  out 
there;  surely,  it  behooves  us  to  look  to  it,  lest  we 
give  to  the  people  whom  we  have  made  helpless 
scorpions  for  fish  and  stones  for  bread. 

UT  since  neither  on  this  side,  nor  on  any 
other,  can  art  be  amended,  until  the 
countries  that  lead  civilisation  are  them- 
selves in  a  healthy  state  about  it,  let  us 
return  to  the  consideration  of  its  condition  among 
ourselves.    And  again  I  say,  that  obvious  as  is  that 
surface  improvement  of  the  arts  within  the  last 
few  years,  I  fear  too  much  that  there  is  something 
wrong  about  the  root  of  the  plant  to  exult  over 
the  bursting  of  its  February  buds. 


22 


HAVE  just  shown  you  for  one  thing  that  The  Art  of 
lovers  of  Indian  and  Eastern  Art  includ-  the  People 
ing  as  they  do  the  heads  of  our  institu- 
tions for  art  education,  and  I  am  sure 
many  among  what  are  called  the  governing  classes, 
are  utterly  powerless  to  stay  its  downward  course. 
The  general  tendency  of  civilisation  is  against  them, 
and  is  too  strong  for  them. 

GAIN,  though  many  of  us  love  archi- 
tecture dearly,  and  believe  that  it  helps 
the  healthiness  both  of  body  and  soul  to 
live  among  beautiful  things,  we  of  the 
big  towns  are  mostly  compelled  to  live  in  houses 
which  have  become  a  by-word  of  contempt  for 
their  ugliness  and  inconvenience.  The  stream  of 
civilisation  is  against  us,  and  we  cannot  battle 
against  it. 

NCE  more  those  devoted  men  who  have 
upheld  the  standard  of  truth  and  beauty 
amongst  us,  and  whose  pictures,  painted 
amidst  difficulties  that  none  but  a  painter 
can  know,  show  qualities  of  mind  unsurpassed  in 
any  age— these  great  men  have  but  a  narrow  circle 
that  can  understand  their  works,  and  are  utterly 
unknown  to  the  great  mass  of  the  people:  civilisa- 
tion is  so  much  against  them,  that  they  cannot 
move  the  people. 


23 


The  Art  of 
the  People 


HEREFORE>  looking  at  all  this,  I 
cannot  think  that  all  is  well  with 
the  root  of  the  tree  we  are  cultiva- 
ting»  Indeed,  I  believe  that  if  other 
things  were  but  to  stand  still  in  the 
world,  this  improvement  before 
mentioned  would  lead  to  a  kind  of  art  which, 
in  that  impossible  case,  would  be  in  a  way  stable, 
would  perhaps  stand  still  also*  This  would  be  an 
art  cultivated  professedly  by  a  few,  and  for  a  few, 
who  would  consider  it  necessary — a  duty,  if  they 
could  admit  duties— to  despise  the  common  herd, 
to  hold  themselves  aloof  from  all  that  the  world 
has  been  struggling  for  from  the  first,  to  guard 
carefully  every  approach  to  their  palace  of  art.  It 
would  be  a  pity  to  waste  many  words  on  the  pros- 
pect of  such  a  school  of  art  as  this,  which  does  in 
a  way,  theoretically  at  least,  exist  at  present,  and 
has  for  its  watchword  a  piece  of  slang  that  does 
not  mean  the  harmless  thing  it  seems  to  mean- 
art  for  art's  sake.  Its  fore-doomed  end  must  be, 
that  art  at  last  will  seem  too  delicate  a  thing  for 
even  the  hands  of  the  initiated  to  touch;  and  the 
initiated  must  at  last  sit  still  and  do  nothing— to 
the  grief  of  no  one. 

Well,certainly,if  I  thought  you  were  come  here  to 
further  such  an  art  as  this  I  could  not  have  stood  up 
and  called  you  friends;  though  such  a  feeble  folk  as  I 
have  told  you  of  one  could  scarce  care  to  call  foes. 

24 


ET,  as  I  say,  such  men  exist  and  I  have  The  Art  o£ 
troubled  you  with  speaking  of  them,  the  People 
because  I  know  that  those  honest  and 
intelligent  people,  who  are  eager  for  hu- 
man progress,  and  yet  lack  part  of  the  human 
senses,  and  are  anti-artistic,  suppose  that  such  men 
are  artists,  and  that  this  is  what  art  means,  and 
what  it  does  for  people,  and  that  such  a  narrow, 
cowardly  life  is  what  we,  fellow-handicraftsmen, 
aim  at.  I  see  this  taken  for  granted  continu- 
ally, even  by  many  who,  to  say  truth,  ought  to 
know  better,  and  I  long  to  put  the  slur  from  off 
us;  to  make  people  understand  that  we,  least  of  all 
men,  wish  to  widen  the  gulf  between  the  classes, 
nay,  worse  still,  to  make  new  classes  of  elevation, 
and  new  classes  of  degradation— new  lords  and  new 
slaves ;  that  we,  least  of  all  men,  want  to  cultivate 
the  'plant  called  man  in  different  ways — here  sting- 
ily, there  wastefully:  I  wish  people  to  understand 
that  the  art  we  are  striving  for  is  a  good  thing 
which  all  can  share,  which  will  elevate  all;  in  good 
sooth,  if  all  people  do  not  soon  share  it  there  will 
soon  be  none  to  share;  if  all  are  not  elevated  by 
it,  mankind  will  lose  the  elevation  it  has  gained. 
Nor  is  such  an  art  as  we  long  for  a  vain  dream; 
such  an  art  once  was  in  times  that  were  worse 
than  these,  when  there  was  less  courage,  kindness, 
and  truth  in  the  world  than  there  is  now;  such  an 
art  there  will  be  hereafter,  when  there  will  be 
d  25 


The  Art  of  more  courage,  kindness,  and  truth  than  there  is 
the  People  now  in  the  world, 

jET  us  look  backward  in  history  once 
more  for  a  short  while,  and  then  steadily 
forward  till  my  words  are  done:  I  began 
iL^-jti>Ji^  by  saying  that  part  of  the  common  and 
necessary  advice  given  to  Art  students  was  to  study 
antiquity ;  and  no  doubt  many  of  you,  like  me,  have 
done  so;  have  wandered,  for  instance,  through  the 
galleries  of  the  admirable  museum  of  South  Ken- 
sington, and,  like  me,  have  been  filled  with  wonder 
and  gratitude  at  the  beauty  which  has  been  born 
from  the  brain  of  man.  Now,  consider,  I  pray  you, 
what  these  wonderful  works  are,  and  how  they 
were  made;  and  indeed,  it  is  neither  in  extrava- 
gance nor  without  due  meaning  that  I  use  the 
word  'wonderful'  in  speaking  of  them.  Well, 
these  things  are  just  the  common  household  goods 
of  those  past  days,  and  that  is  one  reason  why  they 
are  so  few  and  so  carefully  treasured.  They  were 
common  things  in  their  own  day,  used  without  fear 
of  breaking  or  spoiling— no  rarities  then— and  yet 
we  have  called  them  'wonderful/ 

ND  how  were  they  made?    Did  a  great 

artist  draw  the  designs  for  them— a  man 

^   of  cultivation,  highly  paid,  daintily  fed, 

carefully  housed,  wrapped  up  in  cotton 

wool,  in  short,  when  he  was  not  at  work?   By 

no  means.    Wonderful  as  these  works  are,  they 

26 


were  made  by  'common  fellows/  as  the  phrase  The  Art  of 
goes,  in  the  common  course  of  their  daily  labour^  the  People 
Such  were  the  men  we  honour  in  honouring  those 
works.  And  their  labour— do  you  think  it  was 
irksome  to  them?  Those  of  you  who  are  artists 
know  very  well  that  it  was  not;  that  it  could  not 
be.  Many  a  grin  of  pleasure.  Til  be  bound— and 
you  will  not  contradict  me— went  to  the  carrying 
through  of  those  mazes  of  mysterious  beauty,  to 
the  invention  of  those  strange  beasts  and  birds 
and  flowers  that  we  ourselves  have  chuckled  over 
at  South  Kensington.  While  they  were  at  work, 
at  least,  these  men  were  not  unhappy,  and  I  sup- 
pose they  worked  most  days,  and  the  most  part  of 
the  day,  as  we  do. 

R  those  treasures  of  architecture  that  we 
study  so  carefully  nowadays— what  are 
they?  how  were  they  made?  There  are 
great  minsters  among  them,  indeed,  and 
palaces  of  kings  and  lords,  but  not  many;  and,  noble 
and  awe-inspiring  as  these  may  be,  they  differ  only 
in  size  from  the  little  grey  church  that  still  so  often 
makes  the  common-place  English  landscape  beauti- 
ful, and  the  little  grey  house  that  still,  in  some 
parts  of  the  country  at  least,  makes  an  English 
village  a  thing  apart,  to  be  seen  and  pondered  on 
by  all  who  love  romance  and  beauty.  These  form 
the  mass  of  our  architectural  treasures,  the  houses 
that  everyday  people  lived  in,  the  unregarded 

%7 


The  Art  o£  churches  in  which  they  worshipped, 
the  People  ^^^^ND,  once  more,  who  was  it  that  designed 

and  ornamented  them?  The  great  archi- 
tect carefully  kept  for  the  purpose,  and 
guarded  from  the  common  troubles  of 
common  men?  By  no  means.  Sometimes,  per- 
haps, it  was  the  monk,  the  plowman's  brother; 
oftenest  his  other  brother,  the  village  carpenter, 
smith,  mason,  what  not— 'a  common  fellow,' 
whose  common  everyday  labour  fashioned  works 
that  are  to-day  the  wonder  and  despair  of  many  a 
hard-working  'cultivated'  architect.  And  did  he 
loathe  his  work?  No,  it  is  impossible,  I  have 
seen,  as  we  most  of  us  have,  work  done  by  such 
men  in  some  out-of-the-way  hamlet— where  to- 
day even  few  strangers  ever  come,  and  whose 
people  seldom  go  five  miles  from  their  own  doors; 
in  such  places,  I  say,  I  have  seen  work  so  delicate, 
so  careful,  and  so  inventive,  that  nothing  in  its 
way  could  go  further.  And  I  will  assert,  without 
fear  of  contradiction,  that  no  human  ingenuity 
can  produce  work  such  as  this  without  pleasure 
being  a  third  party  to  the  brain  that  conceived  and 
the  hand  that  fashioned  it.  Nor  are  such  works 
rare.  The  throne  of  the  great  Plantagenet,  or  the 
great  Valois,  was  no  more  daintily  carved  than 
the  seat  of  the  village  mass-john,  or  the  chest  of 
the  yoeman  s  good-wife. 

28 


\0,  you  see,  there  was  much  going  on  The  Art  o£ 
to  make  life  endurable  in  those  times,  the  People 
Not  every  day,  you  may  be  sure,  was  a 
day  of  slaughter  and  tumult,  though  the 
histories  read  almost  as  if  it  were  so;  but  every 
day  the  hammer  chinked  on  the  anvil,  and  the 
chisel  played  about  the  oak  beam,  and  never  with- 
out some  beauty  and  invention  being  born  of  it, 
and  consequently  some  human  happiness. 

HAT  last  word  brings  me  to  the  very 
kernel  and  heart  of  what  I  have  come 
here  to  say  to  you,  and  I  pray  you  to 
think  of  it  most  seriously— not  as  to  my 
words,  but  as  to  a  thought  which  is  stirring  in  the 
world,  and  will  one  day  grow  into  something. 

HAT  thing  which  I  understand  by 
real  art  is  the  expression  by  man  of 
his  pleasure  in  labour.  I  do  not  be- 
lieve he  can  be  happy  in  his  labour 
without  expressing  that  happiness; 
^  and  especially  is  this  so  when  he  is 
at  work  at  anything  in  which  he  specially  excels. 
A  most  kind  gift  is  this  of  nature,  since  all  men, 
nay,  it  seems  all  things  too,  must  labour;  so  that 
not  only  does  the  dog  take  pleasure  in  hunting,  and 
the  horse  in  running,  and  the  bird  in  flying,  but  so 
natural  does  the  idea  seem  to  us,  that  we  imagine 
to  ourselves  that  the  earth  and  the  very  elements 
rejoice  in  doing  their  appointed  work;  and  the  poets 

29 


The  Art  of  have  told  us  of  the  spring  meadows  smiling,  of  the 
the  People  exultation  of  the  fire>  of  the  countless  laughter  of 
the  sea. 

OR  until  these  latter  days  has  man  ever 
rejected  this  universal  gift  but  always, 
when  he  has  not  been  too  much  per- 
plexed, too  much  bound  by  disease  or 
beaten  down  by  trouble,  has  striven  to  make  his 
work  at  least  happy.    Pain  he  has  too  often  found 
in  his  pleasure,  and  weariness  in  his  rest,  to  trust 
to  these.    What  matter  if  his  happiness  lie  with 
what  must  be  always  with  him — his  work? 

]ND,  once  more,  shall  we,  who  have  gained 
so  much,  forego  this  gain,  the  earliest, 
most  natural  gain  of  mankind?    If  we 
have  to  a  great  extent  done  so,  as  I  verily 
fear  we  have,  what  strange  foglights  must  have 
misled  us;  or  rather  let  me  say,  how  hard  pressed 
we  must  have  been  in  the  battle  with  the  evils  we 
have  overcome,  to  have  forgotten  the  greatest  of 
all  evils.    I  cannot  call  it  less  than  that.    If  a  man 
has  work  to  do  which  he  despises,  which  does 
not  satisfy   his   natural   and  rightful   desire   for 
pleasure,  the  greater  part  of  his  life  must  pass  un- 
happily and  without  self-respect.    Consider,  I  beg 
of  you,  what  that  means,  and  what  ruin  must 
come  of  it  in  the  end. 


30 


g^^F  I  could  only  persuade  you  of  this,  that  The  Art  o£ 
the  chief  duty  of  the  civilised  world  to-  the  People 
^  day  is  to  set  about  making  labour  happy 
=s^  for  all,  to  do  its  utmost  to  minimise 
the  amount  of  unhappy  labour— nay,  if  I  could 
only  persuade  some  two  or  three  of  you  here 
present— I  should  have  made  a  good  night's 
work  of  it. 

jO  not,  at  any  rate,  shelter  yourselves 
from  any  misgiving  you  may  have  be- 
hind the  fallacy  that  the  art-lacking 
labour  of  to-day  is  happy  work:  for  the 
most  of  men  it  is  not  so.  It  would  take  long, 
perhaps,  to  show  you,  and  make  you  fully  under- 
stand that  the  would-be  art  which  it  produces  is 
joyless.  But  there  is  another  token  of  its  being 
most  unhappy  work,  which  you  cannot  fail  to 
understand  at  once— a  grievous  thing  that  token 
is— and  I  beg  of  you  to  believe  that  I  feel  the  full 
shame  of  it,  as  I  stand  here  speaking  of  it;  but  if 
we  do  not  admit  that  we  are  sick,  how  can  we  be 
healed?  This  hapless  token  is,  that  the  work  done 
by  the  civilised  world  is  mostly  dishonest  work. 
Look  now:  I  admit  that  civilisation  does  make 
certain  things  well,  things  which  it  knows,  con- 
sciously or  unconsciously,  are  necessary  to  its 
present  unhealthy  condition.  These  things,  to 
speak  shortly,  are  chiefly  machines  for  carrying  on 
the  competition  in  buying  and  selling,  called 

31 


The  Art  of  falsely  commerce;  and  machines  for  the  violent 
the  People  destruction  of  life— that  is  to  say,  materials  for 
two  kinds  of  war;  of  which  kinds  the  last  is  no 
doubt  the  worst  not  so  much  in  itself  perhaps, 
but  because  on  this  point  the  conscience  of  the 
world  is  beginning  to  be  somewhat  pricked.  But, 
on  the  other  hand,  matters  for  the  carrying  on  of 
a  dignified  daily  life,  that  life  of  mutual  trust,  for- 
bearance, and  help,  which  is  the  only  real  life  of 
thinking  men— these  things  the  civilised  world 
makes  ill,  and  even  increasingly  worse  and  worse. 
^F  I  am  wrong  in  saying  this,  you  know 
well  I  am  only  saying  what  is  widely 
^i  thought,  nay  widely  said  too,  for  that 
5£Si  matter.  Let  me  give  an  instance,  familiar 
enough,  of  that  wide-spread  opinion.  There  is  a 
very  clever  book  of  pictures  now  being  sold  at 
the  railway  bookstalls,  called  The  British  Work- 
ing Man,  by  one  who  does  not  believe  in  him,'— 
a  title  and  a  book  which  make  me  both  angry  and 
ashamed,  because  the  two  express  much  injustice, 
and  not  a  little  truth  in  their  quaint,  and  necessa- 
rily exaggerated  way.  It  is  quite  true,  and  very  sad 
to  say,  that  if  anyone  nowadays  wants  a  piece  of 
ordinary  work  done  by  gardener,  carpenter,  mason, 
dyer,  weaver,  smith,  what  you  will,  he  will  be  a 
lucky  rarity  if  he  get  it  well  done.  He  will,  on  the 
contrary,  meet  on  every  side  with  evasion  of  plain 
duties,  and  disregard  of  other  men  s  rights;  yet  I 

3^ 


cannot  see  how  the  'British  Working  Man  is  to  The  Art  of 
be  made  to  bear  the  whole  burden  of  this  blame,  the  People 
or  indeed  the  chief  part  of  it.  I  doubt  if  it  be  pos- 
sible for  a  whole  mass  of  men  to  do  work  to  which 
they  are  driven,  and  in  which  there  is  no  hope  and 
no  pleasure,  without  trying  to  shirk  it— at  any  rate, 
shirked  it  has  always  been  under  such  circum- 
stances. On  the  other  hand,  I  know  that  there  are 
some  men  so  right-minded,  that  they  will,  in  de- 
spite of  irksomeness  and  hopelessness,  drive  right 
through  their  work.  Such  men  are  the  salt  of  the 
earth.  But  must  there  not  be  something  wrong 
with  a  state  of  society  which  drives  these  into  that 
bitter  heroism,  and  the  most  part  into  shirking,  in- 
to the  depths  often  of  half-conscious  self-contempt 
and  degradation?  Be  sure  that  there  is,  that  the 
blindness  and  hurry  of  civilisation,  as  it  now  is, 
have  to  answer  a  heavy  charge  as  to  that  enormous 
amount  of  pleasureless  work— work  that  tries  every 
muscle  of  the  body  and  every  atom  of  the  brain, 
and  which  is  done  without  pleasure  and  without 
aim— work  which  everybody  who  has  to  do  with 
tries  to  shuffle  off  in  the  speediest  way  that  dread 
of  starvation  or  ruin  will  allow  him. 

^^  AM  as  sure  of  one  thing  as  that  I  am 
living  and  breathing,  and  it  is  this :  that 
the  dishonesty  in  the  daily  arts  of  life, 
complaints  of  which  are  in  all  men  s 
mouths,  and  which  I  can  answer  for  it  does  exist, 
e  33 


The  Art  o£  is  the  natural  and  inevitable  result  of  the  world  in 
the  People  the  hurry  of  the  war  of  the  counting-house,  and  the 
war  of  the  battlefield,  having  forgotten— of  all  men, 
I  say,  each  for  the  other,  having  forgotten,  that 
pleasure  in  our  daily  labour,  which  nature  cries  out 
for  as  its  due, 

HEREFORE,  I  say  again,  it  is  necessary 

to  the  further  progress  of  civilisation  that 

men  should  turn  their  thoughts  to  some 

means  of  limiting,  and  in   the  end  of 

doing  away  with,  degrading  labour. 

DO  not  think  my  words  hitherto 
spoken  have  given  you  any  occasion 
to  think  that  I  mean  by  this  either 
hard  or  rough  labour;  I  do  not  pity 
men  much   for  their  hardships, 
especially  if  they  be  accidental;  not 
necessarily  attached  to  one  class  or  one  condition, 
I  mean.   Nor  do  I  think  (I  were  crazy  or  dream- 
ing else)  that  the  work  of  the  world  can  be  carried 
on  without  rough  labour;  but  I  have  seen  enough 
of  that  to  know  that  it  need  not  be  by  any  means 
degrading.   To  plough  the  earth,  to  cast  the  net, 
to  fold  the  flock— these,  and  such  as  these,  which 
are  rough  occupations  enough,  and  which  carry 
with  them  many  hardships,  are  good  enough  for 
the  best  of  us,  certain  conditions  of  leisure,  freedom, 
and  due  wages  being  granted.   As  to  the  brick- 
layer, the  mason,  and  the  like— these  would  be 

34 


artists,  and  doing  not  only  necessary,  but  beautiful  The  Art  o£ 
and  therefore  happy  work,  if  art  were  anything  the  People 
like  what  it  should  be.  No,  it  is  not  such  labour 
as  this  which  we  need  to  do  away  with,  but  the 
toil  which  makes  the  thousand  and  one  things 
which  nobody  wants,  which  are  used  merely  as 
the  counters  for  the  competitive  buying  and  sell- 
ing, falsely  called  commerce,  which  I  have  spoken 
of  before— I  know  in  my  heart,  and  not  merely  by 
my  reason,  that  this  toil  cries  out  to  be  done  away 
with.  But,  besides  that,  the  labor  which  now 
makes  things  good  and  necessary  in  themselves, 
merely  as  counters  for  the  commercial  war  afore- 
said, needs  regulating  and  reforming.  Nor  can  this 
reform  be  brought  about  save  by  art;  and  if  we 
were  only  come  to  our  right  minds,  and  could  see 
the  necessity  for  making  labour  sweet  to  all  men, 
as  it  is  now  to  very  few— the  necessity,  I  repeat; 
lest  discontent,  unrest,  and  despair  should  at  last 
swallow  up  all  society— If  we,  then,  with  our  eyes 
cleared,  could  but  make  some  sacrifice  of  things 
which  do  us  no  good,  since  we  unjustly  and  un- 
easily possess  them,  then  indeed  I  believe  we  should 
sow  the  seeds  of  a  happiness  which  the  world  has 
not  yet  known,  of  a  rest  and  content  which  would 
make  it  what  I  cannot  help  thinking  it  was  meant 
to  be :  and  with  that  seed  would  be  sown  also  the 
seed  of  real  art,  the  expression  of  man  s  happiness 
in  his  labour,— an  art  made  by  the  people,  and  for 

35 


The  Art  of 
the  People 


the  people,  as  a  happiness  to  the  maker  and  the 
user, 

HAT  is  the  only  real  art  there  is,  the  only- 
art  which  will  be  an  instrument  to  the 
progress  of  the  world,  and  not  a  hin- 
drance. Nor  can  I  seriously  doubt  that  in 
your  hearts  you  know  that  it  is  so,  all  of  you,  at 
any  rate,  who  have  in  you  an  instinct  for  art.  I 
believe  that  you  agree  with  me  in  this,  though  you 
may  differ  from  much  else  that  I  have  said.  I 
think  assuredly  that  this  is  the  art  whose  welfare 
we  have  met  together  to  further,  and  the  necessary 
instruction  in  which  we  have  undertaken  to  spread 
as  widely  as  may  be. 

HUS  I  have  told  you  something  of  what 
I  think  is  to  be  hoped  and  feared  for  the 
future  of  art;  and  if  you  ask  me  what  I 
expect  as  a  practical  outcome  of  the 
admission  of  these  opinions,  I  must  say  at  once 
that  I  know,  even  if  we  were  all  of  one  mind,  and 
that  what  I  think  the  right  mind  on  this  subject, 
we  should  still  have  much  work  and  many  hin- 
drances before  us;  we  should  still  have  need  of  all 
the  prudence,  foresight,  and  industry  of  the  best 
among  us;  and,  even  so,  our  path  would  some- 
times seem  blind  enough.  And,  to-day,  when  the 
opinions  which  we  think  right,  and  which  one 
day  will  be  generally  thought  so,  have  to  struggle 
sorely  to  make  themselves  noticed  at  all,  it  is  early 

36 


days  for  us  to  try  to  see  our  exact  and  clearly  The  Art  of 
mapped  road.  I  suppose  you  will  think  it  too  the  People 
commonplace  of  me  to  say  that  the  general 
education  that  makes  men  think,  will  one  day 
make  them  think  rightly  upon  art.  Common- 
place as  it  is,  I  really  believe  it  and  am  indeed 
encouraged  by  it,  when  I  remember  how  obviously 
this  age  is  one  of  transition  from  the  old  to  the 
new,  and  what  a  strange  confusion,  from  out  of 
which  we  shall  one  day  come,  our  ignorance  and 
half-ignorance  is  like  to  make  of  the  exhausted 
rubbish  of  the  old  and  the  crude  rubbish  of  the 
new,  both  of  which  lie  so  ready  to  our  hands. 

UT,  if  I  must  say,  furthermore,  any  words 
that  seem  like  words  of  practical  advice, 
I  think  my  task  is  hard,  and  I  fear  I  shall 
offend  some  of  you  whatever  I  say;  for 
this  is  indeed  an  affair  of  morality,  rather  than  of 
what  people  call  art. 

OWEVER,  I  cannot  forget  that,  in  my 

I  mind,  it  is  not  possible  to  dissociate  art 

^y  ;  from   morality,   politics,  and   religion. 

^isa  Truth  in  these  ofreat  matters  of  principle 


is  of  one,  and  it  is  only  in  formal  treatises  that  it 
can  be  split  up  diversely.  I  must  also  ask  you  to 
remember  how  I  have  already  said,  that  though 
my  mouth  alone  speaks,  it  speaks,  however  feebly 
and  disjointedly,  the  thoughts  of  many  men  better 
than  myself.    And  further,  though  when  things 

37 


The  Art  of  are  tending  to  the  best,  we  shall  still,  as  afore- 

the  People  said,  need  our  best  men  to  lead  us  quite  right;  yet 

even  now  surely,  when  it  is  far  from  that,  the 

least  of  us  can  do  some  yeoman  s  service  to  the 

cause,  and  live  and  die  not  without  honour. 

O  I  will  say  that  I  believe  there  are 
two  virtues  much  needed  in  modern 
life,  if  it  is  ever  to  become  sweet;  and 
I  am  quite  sure  that  they  are  abso- 
lutely necessary  in  the  sowing  the 
seed  of  an  art  which  is  to  be  made 
by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  as  a  happiness 
to  the  maker  and  the  user.    These  virtues  are  hon- 
esty, and  simplicity  of  life.    To  make  my  meaning 
clearer  I  will  name  the  opposing  vice  of  the  sec- 
ond of  these— luxury  to  wit.    Also  I  mean  by  hon- 
esty, the  careful  and  eager  giving  his  due  to  every 
man,  the  determination  not  to  gain  by  any  man  s 
loss,  which  in  my  experience  is  not  a  common 
virtue. 

jUT  note  how  the  practice  of  either  of 

these  virtues  will  make  the  other  easier 

to  us.  For  if  our  wants  are  few,  we  shall 

have  but  little  chance  of  being  driven  by 

our  wants  into  injustice;  and  if  we  are  fixed  in  the 

principle  of  giving  every  man  his  due,  how  can 

our  self-respect  bear  that  we  should  give  too  much 

to  ourselves? 


38 


^^ND  in  art  and  in  that  preparation  for  it  The  Art  o£ 
without  which  no  art  that  is  stable  or  the  People 
worthy  can  be,  the  raising,  namely,  of 
those  classes  which  have  heretofore  been 
degraded,  the  practice  of  these  virtues  would  make 
a  new  world  of  it.  For  if  you  are  rich,  your  sim- 
plicity of  life  will  both  go  towards  smoothing  over 
the  dreadful  contrast  between  waste  and  want, 
which  is  the  great  horror  of  civilised  countries,  and 
will  also  give  an  example  and  standard  of  dignified 
life  to  those  classes  which  you  desire  to  raise,  who, 
as  it  is  indeed,  being  like  enough  to  rich  people, 
are  given  both  to  envy  and  to  imitate  the  idleness 
and  waste  that  the  possession  of  much  money 
produces. 

AY,  and  apart  from  the  morality  of  the 
matter,  which  I  am  forced  to  speak  to 
you  of,  let  me  tell  you  that  though  sim- 
plicity in  art  may  be  costly  as  well  as 
uncostly,  at  least  it  is  not  wasteful,  and  nothing  is 
more  destructive  to  art  than  the  want  of  it.  I  have 
never  been  in  any  rich  man  s  house  which  would 
not  have  looked  the  better  for  having  a  bonfire 
made  outside  of  it  of  nine-tenths  of  all  that  it  held^ 
Indeed,  our  sacrifice  on  the  side  of  luxury  will,  it 
seems  to  me,  be  little  or  nothing:  for,  as  far  as  I 
can  make  out,  what  people  usually  mean  by  it,  is 
either  a  gathering  of  possessions  which  are  sheer 
vexations  to  the  owner,  or  a  chain  of  pompous  cir- 

39 


The  Art  of  cumstance,  which  checks  and  annoys  the  rich  man 
the  People  at  every  step.    Yes,  luxury  cannot  exist  without 
slavery  of  some  kind  or  other,  and  its  abolition  will 
be  blessed,  like  the  abolition  of  other  slaveries,  by 
the  freeing  both  of  the  slaves  and  of  their  masters, 
^f'^^^ASTLY,  if,  besides  attaining  to  simplicity 
^  of  life,  we  attain  also  to  the  love  of  justice, 
^  then  will  all  things  be  ready  for  the  new 
springtime  of  the  arts.    For  those  of  us 
that  are  employers  of  labour,  how  can  we  bear  to 
give,  any  man  less  money  than  he  can  decently  live 
on,  less  leisure  than  his  education  and  self-respect 
demand?  or  those  of  us  who  are  workmen,  how 
can  we  bear  to  fail  in  the  contract  we  have  under- 
taken, or  to  make  it  necessary  for  a  foreman  to  go 
up  and  down  spying  out  our  mean  tricks  and  eva- 
sions? or  we  the  shopkeepers — can  we  endure  to 
lie  about  our  wares,  that  we  may  shuffle  off  our 
losses  on  to  some  one  else's  shoulders?  or  we  the 
public— how  can  we  bear  to  pay  a  price  for  a  piece 
of  goods  which  will  help  to  trouble  one  man,  to 
ruin  another,  and  starve  a  third?   Or,  still  more, 
I  think,  how  can  we  bear  to  use,  how  can  we  enjoy 
something  which  has  been  a  pain  and  a  grief  for 
the  maker  to  make? 

ND  now,  I  think,  I  have  said  what  I  came 

to  say,    I  confess  that  there  is  nothing 

new  in  it,  but  you  know  the  experience 

of  the  world  is  that  a  thing  must  be  said 

40 


over  and  over  again  before  any  great  number  of  The  Art  of 
men  can  be  got  to  listen  to  it.    Let  my  words  to-  the  People 
night  therefore,  pass  for  one  of  the  necessary  times 
that  the  thought  in  them  must  be  spoken  out. 

|OR  the  rest  I  believe  that,  however  seri- 
ously these  words  may  be  gainsayed,  I 
have  been  speaking  to  an  audience  in 
whom  any  words  spoken  from  a  sense  of 
duty  and  in  hearty  good-will,  as  mine  have  been, 
will  quicken  thought  and  sow  some  good  seed.  At 
any  rate,  it  is  good  for  a  man  who  thinks  seriously 
to  face  his  fellows,  and  speak  out  whatever  really 
burns  in  him,  so  that  men  may  seem  less  strange 
to  one  another,  and  misunderstanding,  the  fruitful 
cause  of  aimless  strife,  may  be  avoided. 

UT  if  to  any  of  you  I  have  seemed  to  speak 
hopelessly,  my  words  have  been  lacking 
in  art;  and  you  must  remember  that 
hopelessness  would  have  locked  my 
mouth,  not  opened  it.  I  am,  indeed,  hopeful,  but 
can  I  give  a  date  to  the  accomplishment  of  my 
hope,  and  say  that  it  will  happen  in  my  life  or  yours? 
But  I  will  say  at  least.  Courage !  for  things  won- 
derful, unhoped-for,  glorious,  have  happened  even 
in  this  short  while  I  have  been  alive. 

ES,  surely  these  times  are  wonderful  and 

i<  fruitful  of  change,  which,  as  it  wears  and 

gathers  new  life  even  in  its  wearing,  will 

one  day  bring  better  things  for  the  toiling 

41 


The  Art  of    days  of  men>  who,  with  freer  hearts  and  clearer 
the  People    eyes>  will  once  more  gain  the  sense  of  outward 
beauty,  and  rejoice  in  it. 

EANWHILE,  if  these  hours  be  dark,  as, 
indeed,  in  many  ways  they  are,  at  least 
do  not  let  us  sit  deedless,  like  fools  and 
fine  gentlemen,  thinking  the  common  toil 
not  good  enough  for  us,  and  beaten  by  the  muddle; 
but  rather  let  us  work  like  good  fellows  trying  by 
some  dim  candle-light  to  set  our  workshop  ready 
against  to-morrow's  daylight— that  to-morrow, 
when  the  civilised  world,  no  longer  greedy,  strife- 
ful,  and  destructive,  shall  have  a  new  art,  a  glori- 
ous art,  made  by  the  people  and  for  the  people,  as 
a  happiness  to  the  maker  and  the  user. 


THIS  EDITION  OF  'THE  ART  OF  THE 
PEOPLE'  BY  WILLIAM  MORRIS,  IS  THE 
FIRST  BOOK  IN  WHICH  IS  USED  THE 
TYPE  DESIGNED  BY  ft  CAST  FOR  MR. 
SEYMOUR;  TWO  HUNDRED  &>  FIFTEEN 
COPIES  ON  PAPER  65  TEN  ON  JAPAN 
VELLUM  HAVE  BEEN  PRINTED  BY  GEO. 
F.  McKIERNAN  &>  CO.  IN  CHICAGO  FOR 
THE  PUBLISHER  RALPH  FLETCHER 
SEYMOUR,  ft  THE  TYPE  DISTRIBUTED 
NOVEMBER,  MDCCCCII 


RETURK' 


Al 


GENERAL  LIBRARY  ■  U.C.  BERKELEY 


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